Finishing gray pine

Or, smoke pine I’ve heard it called; gray streaks all through the pine. I just made two small tables out of gray pine T&G flooring (a prototype) and would like to stain it. I’ve put a few different stains on scraps and don’t like any of them. The problem is the stains all look several shades different depending on the grain of different boards. Will pre-stain pretty much eliminate that color variation? Thanks. john

Type in Beetle kill pine in Google and you’ll find a lot of info on it. It’s actually a tree that was liked by a beetle. It turns blue after it’s dead by a fungus I suppose. I’ve found it at lowes a few times just looking through the pine boards.Gerald

Herb your right! I should proof read better. I’ve always had that problem. I think faster than my fingers can keep up. If I knew how to highlight things like you do I’d be better off.Funny thing about that blue stain pine. It’s sometimes sold at a premium. My neighbor was a tree faller for years. Their price was docked for cutting trees with blue stain in them.

Blue stained pine usually happens sometime between sawing and kiln drying pine lumber. It often happens as well to beetle killed pine possibly before it’s is salvaged but could just be due to there being so much salvage trees sitting around waiting to be milled too. It is usually considered a defect but with there being so much beetle killed salvage lumber, they started marketing it as a “special type” just like ambrosia maple. If you search online you’ll see where a lot of people have decide to use the blue stain in attractive ways so your best bet may be to embrace the discoloration rather than try to hide it under a stain.

-- Nathan, TX -- Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.

i always precondtion pine that is getting stained . i use oil based stains, so spraying down the surface with mineral spirits then wipe of the excess. works wonders to achieve uniform color.HOWEVERi dont stain blue stain pine. its too purdy the way it is.

thanks. agreed that the “blue” gives character, and can be quite attractive, but some of it just looks dirty, too. i am more interested in not having a white wood shouting at me than any particular color. i put some ArmRSeal on a few scraps and it was a tad loud for me. i just picked up some brown dye at the local lumber store and the operator said the dye will do a good job of equalizing the different colors and should look good under ArmRSeal. i will try to post pics of what i learn shortly. thanks for the replies, and the pics above look very good. if i sell the tables, i’ll not tell the buyer that he/she is buying fungus….

I fiddled with a variety of choices (stain w/ prestain, plain ArmRSeal, dye stain) on scraps and decided to try the General Light Brown dye stain. Three pics are here on photobucket. I think it looks good, and the dye stain is super easy to apply. Plain ArmRSeal was just way too bright. Cheers. jhttp://s862.photobucket.com/user/johnny10k/library/?view=recent&page=1